Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Who to trust?
Writer’s note: When Michelle Sinclair went on maternity leave we temporarily lost our blockbuster/sci fi/superhero stalwart. Michelle used to have the slot the week before me and my hunch is that she would have written about Captain America: Winter Soldier last week. So I’m channeling my inner Michelle this week on the latest Marvel Comic movie, and latest in the Avengers series.Walt Disney Company’s movie strategy these days is to scoop up well-known brands and release a movie from one of these entities every quarter. The company paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm, another $4 billion for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and much, much, much less for The Muppets. While there are no guarantees that this strategy will translate at the box office (just ask the Muppets), the movies based on Marvel Comics are as close as a sure thing you can get. The Marvel Cinematic Universe already ranks second as top-grossing franchise in movie history behind the Harry Potter movies. That begs the question: if hundreds of millions of dollars are guaranteed in workwide box office sales with each Marvel release, does Disney really care about quality? It’s a question Chicago Cubs fans have dealt with for years. Wrigley Field sells out consistently, so do the Cubs really need to field a winning team?The Avengers series has fared far better than the Cubs recently, featuring above-average writing, especially evident in the Iron Man series and Marvel’s The Avengers two years ago.
